Making art in the studio, listening to music or NPR and thinking, all the time thinking. It could be about red versus orange or politics or the world collapsing around us or growing old or (most probably) wondering what to have for dinner.

Wow, I forgot I even made this blog. What a surprise. Who knows what else I've forgotten?

So the last day of 2008 - not a bad year for me - how about you? Millions hurt but I had no money to lose and no house to buy or sell. I guess that's success, as redefined these days. I laughed, I cried, celebrated, mourned, all that stuff. I made a lot of work and sold some of it.

I was looking at that pristine view of the new studio I posted initially before I started to work in it. I actually took a few photos last week of the way it looks now, a couple of years later. These are three current views.

Lots of mess but lots of work, too.

It's amazing how much stuff it takes to paint a few pictures. It starts with a selection of canvases, but you have to have bubblewrap for everything and many paints and brushes and tools. Then you move on to panels so you need wood and a saw - maybe two saws - and more tools to add to the brushes, paints, cleaners, etc., etc. And if you work in more than one medium, you need all those supplies. Of course you have completed work and books about other artists. No end to it all. No wonder stuff always expands to fill any size studio.

I was reading about Sean Scully and the buildings he owns for his studios - thousands of feet. I could fill those easily.

I could probably fill those thousands of feet just with wax balls. When will I ever use them? They do make a nice centerpiece for Thanksgiving Dinner.

Being messy is one of the reasons that encaustic appeals to me. Amazing that such glossy, pristine-looking work can come from a mess like this. What fun!

Moving into a new studio is always daunting. It's not only lugging all that crap in, but it's unpacking it and wondering why you brought it along. By the time you finish unpacking it all and putting it somewhere, the new space that you thought was so spacious has become cramped. Ahh! Must build storage racks. That will take at least a month and be a good excuse to put off starting the real work of making art. You have already spent all that time packing, cleaning, moving, unpacking and now building.

Well, I never did build any racks, just stogged the stuff in and started working.

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Some topics you might like to look up:

El Anatsui

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What am I reading?

I'm always reading something and now it's another one of Robert Caro's volumes of Lyndon Johnson's biography. "Passage of Power" is the fourth volume in this monumental series and covers the years 1958 to 1964. This period of Johnson's life was full of extremes of power - from the peak as Majority Leader of the Senate, then fading as he failed to actively campaign for the presidential nomination in 1960. Once he joined Kennedy on the 1960 Democratic ticket, his southern connections gave Kennedy the win, but Johnson sank into powerless oblivion and became the butt of jokes by "the Harvards." On Kennedy's death, Johnson ascended to the presidency and experienced another series of extremes of political power.

Caro is a master of biography and is always interesting and informative. I recommend this volume (and series) to anyone who follows politics and wants to know some background on how we got where we are today.